Metal Fish Out of Water [Closed]
- Thread starter webkilla
- Start date
Burning Lion peeks out at the sunset through a slit between some of the reed bundles that make up the wall in his hut:
"He 'recruits' them from the villages he controls. The most beautiful young girl and boys are often given to him freely, for he rewards those families with a one-time payment of silver. When you become too old to be beautiful you're let go into the city to work, or allowed to return to your village"
((Fun fact: In Exalted, due to Dragonblooded social engineering, EVERYONE is bisexual by defeault... and in autochtonia the same is true all there are equal))
"He 'recruits' them from the villages he controls. The most beautiful young girl and boys are often given to him freely, for he rewards those families with a one-time payment of silver. When you become too old to be beautiful you're let go into the city to work, or allowed to return to your village"
((Fun fact: In Exalted, due to Dragonblooded social engineering, EVERYONE is bisexual by defeault... and in autochtonia the same is true all there are equal))
Freeman frowning intensifies
Code:
Infiltration doesn't have to be the only option. Prudence is necesary here.
Burning Lion's portrayal of this ruler indicates a level of organization we have
not seen at this village.
An option might be to simply approach this government and request an audience.
This could yield the needed intelligence required to pass judgement and make
further plans.
My point: Why start a rebellion, when we might simply usher in reforms?
Endearing ourselves to this ruler might be a more efficient means of
gaining the resources we need, while at the same time reducing wasteful
excess perpetrated by the government
Raparth
Oracle of Dimensional Science
- The Starmetal considers the information relayed by Avatar of Multiform Diplomacy. Eventually she nods, perhaps to herself, "Beyond even the material advantages of removing this 'Silver Coyote,' we are obligated by our designation as Champions of the Great Maker to better the lives of those suffering under such corruption. Whether we chose to enforce reform upon the local inhabitants by manipulation of their ruler or by his removal, the installation of holy orthodoxy is necessary.
"To do so, however, we must first maximize our combat efficiency. While arc protectors would offer an immediate solution, we would be better served by adapting to the environment directly, rather that remaining ill-adjusted. It would take only the destruction or loss of a set of arc protectors to remove one of us from ready service. As we lack insufficient information about the capabilities of the local Champions or other threats beyond this small village, great diligence is required."
Code:
Before we pass judgement on this Silver Dogman we require more evidence.
So far we only have the testimony of one, one who admits that he is biased due to failing to enter into this lord's warrior elite.
Fools rush ahead, and foolishness goes against the Great Maker's dogma.
Why fight a rebellion when perhaps diplomacy and peaceful reform can be expedited much faster?Ava smiles. "I agree with you on that matter Freeman. But while we are taking the cautious steps toward acquiring the information we need, we should be gathering resources as well. The gratitude of the champion Burning Lion is one resource we can not afford to leave unsecured. He holds this village, and the elder he refereed to as his father in high regard, and by increasing their prosperity, we are securing that resource.
Code:
The cooperation and ressoureces that a ruler can grant,
versus that of an impoverished village.
You must not let your judgement be clouded by personal friendships.
If we approach this Silver Dogman bearing Burning Lion's hostile intent
our attempts at diplomacy might well fail before even started.She sighed. "Before we approach him need to gather more data. And no just ruler would begrudge us from easing the plight of his citizenry. I do not want to adopt Burning Lion's bias without warrant, but I do wish to be on good terms with Burning Lion and this village either way."
Raparth
Oracle of Dimensional Science
The Estasian sighed internally, far from new to experiencing divergent perspectives with an Orichalcum. Her proposal allowed for flexibility, but she could ensure such flexibility at a later date.
"Let's get started."
"Let's get started."
The assembly heads outside, into the faint shreds of light left by the almost set sun.
Few villagers are out, only the few needed to keep some embers going for tomorrow.
At the site of the slaughter the assembly is greeted by the few villagers who've kept watch against scavengers. They seem happy that their chore is at an end and offers to help.
The PONRE devices are quickly deployed and activated, with Freeman using his charms to turn his hands into de-boning machines, plus making his roboting waldos pop out with similar devices. They chew through the carcasses with great speed, leaving the everyone else to 'feed' him stuff to process, and then pour the gory mess he leaves behind into the ponres.
The smell of it all isn't exactly pleasent. The carcasses have only ripened since earlier that day, but as the PONRE devices slowly but surely reduce the meat, sinews and organs to small dry and slightly pink tablets the smell goes away - as the source of the smell diminishes.
As the sun dawns again all of the cattle have been reduced to a pile of bones that have been mechanically picked clean of flesh and connective tissue. Freeman has also erected a very simple, sizable 'house' of a sort of opaque and dirty glass, with a double door entrance so light can't get into the inside... with only a tiny fraction light filtering through the glass itself.
Thus, with the village's food supply more than taken care of - the sack of food pills produced being enough to feed the village for months, if rationed properly. Burning Lion thanks the assembly profusely, with Freeman noting with a bit of time he could also grind the bones down to powder for glue production if need be.
This leaves the assembly with the question of what to do now. There clearly isn't the materials available in the village to produce new arc protectors, but in time it should be possible to acclimate to the daylight.
This concludes the surprisingly lengthy introductory arc (4-5 months...), and informs our first bout of downtime.
Now, since handing out XP here seems kinda tricky - I can't give out per 'session' - and the original idea with giving xp per 2die stunt didn't really get that many opportunities to come into effect, then... everyone gets 14 xp.
Now, the alchies will get used to daylight in week - so lets say you all have seven days of downtime (for training purposes if you wanna spend XP on new charms or whatever)
For the alchies, in case you wanna make charms, this is what you have to work with:
Glass - from local sand
Steel - from the one broken bar that Ava recovered at their point of entry
Copper - from local tools (given only with the promise that the alchies make some better ones... shouldn't be too hard)
Orichalcum, moonsilver and - enough for one new charm of each material
Lets see what gizmos you can make that work with
Few villagers are out, only the few needed to keep some embers going for tomorrow.
At the site of the slaughter the assembly is greeted by the few villagers who've kept watch against scavengers. They seem happy that their chore is at an end and offers to help.
The PONRE devices are quickly deployed and activated, with Freeman using his charms to turn his hands into de-boning machines, plus making his roboting waldos pop out with similar devices. They chew through the carcasses with great speed, leaving the everyone else to 'feed' him stuff to process, and then pour the gory mess he leaves behind into the ponres.
The smell of it all isn't exactly pleasent. The carcasses have only ripened since earlier that day, but as the PONRE devices slowly but surely reduce the meat, sinews and organs to small dry and slightly pink tablets the smell goes away - as the source of the smell diminishes.
As the sun dawns again all of the cattle have been reduced to a pile of bones that have been mechanically picked clean of flesh and connective tissue. Freeman has also erected a very simple, sizable 'house' of a sort of opaque and dirty glass, with a double door entrance so light can't get into the inside... with only a tiny fraction light filtering through the glass itself.
Thus, with the village's food supply more than taken care of - the sack of food pills produced being enough to feed the village for months, if rationed properly. Burning Lion thanks the assembly profusely, with Freeman noting with a bit of time he could also grind the bones down to powder for glue production if need be.
This leaves the assembly with the question of what to do now. There clearly isn't the materials available in the village to produce new arc protectors, but in time it should be possible to acclimate to the daylight.
This concludes the surprisingly lengthy introductory arc (4-5 months...), and informs our first bout of downtime.
Now, since handing out XP here seems kinda tricky - I can't give out per 'session' - and the original idea with giving xp per 2die stunt didn't really get that many opportunities to come into effect, then... everyone gets 14 xp.
Now, the alchies will get used to daylight in week - so lets say you all have seven days of downtime (for training purposes if you wanna spend XP on new charms or whatever)
For the alchies, in case you wanna make charms, this is what you have to work with:
Glass - from local sand
Steel - from the one broken bar that Ava recovered at their point of entry
Copper - from local tools (given only with the promise that the alchies make some better ones... shouldn't be too hard)
Orichalcum, moonsilver and - enough for one new charm of each material
Lets see what gizmos you can make that work with
And thus we resume
A week passes in the village.
The dead are given to the sands and their water to the meager fields that many of them worked all their lives on.
Three souls encased in gems, walking with brass bones and clay flesh, undergo the painful but necessary acclimatization to Creation's sunlight - now they can see normally like everyone one.
Burning Lion helps with language lessons to Mari, who thus learns to speak Flametongue fluently, though with an accent. Ruby Eyes, still unsure of his past sticks to the shadows and gets better at that. Ava already insta-learned Flametongue (Though she can only speak it in Speak&Spell mode now, because that's what the charm teaches...). Ava spent her time [doing something I'll write in once Vinom answers his PM...
Freeman spent some time tinkering in the dark of the glass dwelling he created... but not long - for he spent almost three days away from the village, supposedly mapping the surrounding territory. What kind of map markers he used is a mystery, because the sand dunes shift constantly.
Beyond all that the biggest event during the week was the first night following the great recycling, when Burning Lion organized a small feast in honor of his guests and their aid to the village.
See, in Autochtonia there is three kinds of food:
1) Water, condensed from elemental vapor(water) conduits
2) rat meat and other byproducts - and that was mostly creepy tunnel tribes that did in that...
You see, normal and properly heterodoxical Autochtonias only ate
3) Nutrient Paste, in all its bland glory
Sure, some nations were known to roast, char, or otherwise alchemically flavor their nutrient paste (Through a process not unlike how you also make synth-leather out of the stuff...) - but the proud populat ate their nutrient paste straight and with absolutely no flavor what so ever.
So imagine how the three robo-exalts reacted to actual bloody spices in their food.
Sure, Burning Lion had to explain a few times how eating meat from cows wasn't like eating rat - seeing as cows eat the dry grass and shrubs that sparsely dot the landscape - but trying beef, for the very first time, and that in the form of a traditional southern spicy dish?
Even Freeman found it difficult not to marvel at such a wonder.
The trio of robots all agreed that should a means of travel back to the Great Maker be discovered, then trade in spices and meat (or live cattle and other animals that were 'proper' to eat) would be an ideal contribution to the Octet, both to alieveate strained nutrient paste supplies but also to boost the morale of the octets populat.
However, Freeman would later insist that continuous consumption of such comparably extravagant sources of nutrient was an excess he felt he could not participate in. Luckily the alchemical exalted only need the most meager of organic sustenance, so for the last few days he's been living of twigs and moldy grain, ground into a powder, mixed with brackish water. He notes that its taste isn't entirely unlike proper nutrient slurry.
(Sure, he basically has 5 dots in Craft: Water, which makes him a master chef - what does he do? Temperance 5... yay)
The game will resume once Vinom answers his PM...
A week passes in the village.
The dead are given to the sands and their water to the meager fields that many of them worked all their lives on.
Three souls encased in gems, walking with brass bones and clay flesh, undergo the painful but necessary acclimatization to Creation's sunlight - now they can see normally like everyone one.
Burning Lion helps with language lessons to Mari, who thus learns to speak Flametongue fluently, though with an accent. Ruby Eyes, still unsure of his past sticks to the shadows and gets better at that. Ava already insta-learned Flametongue (Though she can only speak it in Speak&Spell mode now, because that's what the charm teaches...). Ava spent her time [doing something I'll write in once Vinom answers his PM...
Freeman spent some time tinkering in the dark of the glass dwelling he created... but not long - for he spent almost three days away from the village, supposedly mapping the surrounding territory. What kind of map markers he used is a mystery, because the sand dunes shift constantly.
Beyond all that the biggest event during the week was the first night following the great recycling, when Burning Lion organized a small feast in honor of his guests and their aid to the village.
See, in Autochtonia there is three kinds of food:
1) Water, condensed from elemental vapor(water) conduits
2) rat meat and other byproducts - and that was mostly creepy tunnel tribes that did in that...
You see, normal and properly heterodoxical Autochtonias only ate
3) Nutrient Paste, in all its bland glory
Sure, some nations were known to roast, char, or otherwise alchemically flavor their nutrient paste (Through a process not unlike how you also make synth-leather out of the stuff...) - but the proud populat ate their nutrient paste straight and with absolutely no flavor what so ever.
So imagine how the three robo-exalts reacted to actual bloody spices in their food.
Sure, Burning Lion had to explain a few times how eating meat from cows wasn't like eating rat - seeing as cows eat the dry grass and shrubs that sparsely dot the landscape - but trying beef, for the very first time, and that in the form of a traditional southern spicy dish?
Even Freeman found it difficult not to marvel at such a wonder.
The trio of robots all agreed that should a means of travel back to the Great Maker be discovered, then trade in spices and meat (or live cattle and other animals that were 'proper' to eat) would be an ideal contribution to the Octet, both to alieveate strained nutrient paste supplies but also to boost the morale of the octets populat.
However, Freeman would later insist that continuous consumption of such comparably extravagant sources of nutrient was an excess he felt he could not participate in. Luckily the alchemical exalted only need the most meager of organic sustenance, so for the last few days he's been living of twigs and moldy grain, ground into a powder, mixed with brackish water. He notes that its taste isn't entirely unlike proper nutrient slurry.
(Sure, he basically has 5 dots in Craft: Water, which makes him a master chef - what does he do? Temperance 5... yay)
The game will resume once Vinom answers his PM...
It is early morning, almost one and a half weeks since the three alchemicals appeared in Creation.
Their eyes, now able to see daylight, mean that they can now work in sync with their divinely gifted host Ruby Lion who feels that its high time that they all travel to the city of Ozmea and confront the supposedly tyranical Silver Coyote.
To go there on foot will take almost two weeks, as it is necessary to go from oasis to oasis to maintain a supply of water.
Are you all ready to go, and join Ruby Lion on his rightous fight against this oppressor?
Their eyes, now able to see daylight, mean that they can now work in sync with their divinely gifted host Ruby Lion who feels that its high time that they all travel to the city of Ozmea and confront the supposedly tyranical Silver Coyote.
To go there on foot will take almost two weeks, as it is necessary to go from oasis to oasis to maintain a supply of water.
Are you all ready to go, and join Ruby Lion on his rightous fight against this oppressor?
Ruby Lion explains that a straight route is only possible on horseback, as that allows covering the hundred miles or so much faster: "Even if traveling by night to stay out the sun, we'll need a lot of water to walk across desert"
Freeman notes:
Freeman notes:
Code:
I've mapped the surrounding lands using my essence scanner to spot
steam nodes. I found several steam-condensate junctures dotted throughout
the region, most within walking distance. What Ruby Lion says is true.
However: Flight would bring us there in less than two hours. This is more
efficient. But how to facilitate that?Ava sighed. "I'm more then will to carry the water we'll need for the journey." She said before turning to Freeman. "Even with Mari acting as counter weight perpetually, I don't think you could carry the whole group without taking the time to build some sort of steam craft."
Raparth
Oracle of Dimensional Science
- The Starmetal was less than certain of vehicular transportation. "Within this village, we lack the resources for the construction of a proper transport. Their acquisition could quickly equal the travel-time of another method. Our destination will offer resources of a significantly greater magnitude, if the locals' testimony is to be believed."
Turning to Ruby Lion, Marionette remarks in newly mastered Flametongue, "The three of us will not require much, or perhaps any, sustenance for the journey, should it prove short in duration. The potential failure lies within the horses, both in their strength and their number. Does your community have the five required horses?"
((Ok, the wait is over - yall will have to forgive me, I've had to spend some time planning future in-game encounters and coming with witty NPC names and xanatos gambins... oops, did I say that? Oh well, its not like it matters...))
Freeman excuses himself from the discussion with a simple and very brief nod.
Burning Lion turns to the remaining present exalts: Ava, Mari and Ruby Eyes and opens his mouth to speak, when suddenly the loud eruption of plasma-jets denotes Freeman taking to the skies.
After the quite copious amounts of dust settles - which doesn't seem to bother Ava and Mari at all (just another minor detail that highlights their non-human nature) - Burning Lion nods towards Ava:
"Ok, so if what you told about your... storage charm... is right, then you can store things inside you, somehow, right? Can you store water-skins? If we load you up then we might just be the straight journey to Ozmea"
Freeman excuses himself from the discussion with a simple and very brief nod.
Burning Lion turns to the remaining present exalts: Ava, Mari and Ruby Eyes and opens his mouth to speak, when suddenly the loud eruption of plasma-jets denotes Freeman taking to the skies.
After the quite copious amounts of dust settles - which doesn't seem to bother Ava and Mari at all (just another minor detail that highlights their non-human nature) - Burning Lion nods towards Ava:
"Ok, so if what you told about your... storage charm... is right, then you can store things inside you, somehow, right? Can you store water-skins? If we load you up then we might just be the straight journey to Ozmea"
She smiled. "Indeed. If need be, I could retain multiple water storage tanks of up to 240 liters of storage capacity with no decrease in my mobility. The larger the storage unit is up and till that value would be ideal as the effort is based on quantity of objects stored, not weight or volume under the maximum."
Burning Lion looks at Ava in a weird way when she talks about liters: "A water skin is a water skin... what's a 'liter'?"
Just as the gravity of that question is about to sink in, the distant roar of Freeman's plasma jets cuts out - and a split second later Freeman impacts the ground with a metalic clonk as his parabolic leap overchargers absorb the impact, blasting up a thirty foot plume of dust...
(Jumping charms allow you to fall from great height too, assuming you're not tumbling wildly through air and whatnot)
A few minutes later when visibility returns, he stands ready with a slab of freshly hewn sandstone with equally freshly etched old realm glyphs:
Having thrust the slab into Mari's hands, he quickly stomps off towards the glass house. Sounds of industry and metal working quickly commence.
Just as the gravity of that question is about to sink in, the distant roar of Freeman's plasma jets cuts out - and a split second later Freeman impacts the ground with a metalic clonk as his parabolic leap overchargers absorb the impact, blasting up a thirty foot plume of dust...
(Jumping charms allow you to fall from great height too, assuming you're not tumbling wildly through air and whatnot)
A few minutes later when visibility returns, he stands ready with a slab of freshly hewn sandstone with equally freshly etched old realm glyphs:
Code:
I have come up with a means to travel efficiently and expediently.
Mari will use her gravity device to reverse gravity and counter Ava's weight.
Together you should be boyant - we discussed this earlier while in the desert.
If I apply my gravity device to reduce my weight, my plasma thrusters should be
able to compensate for two lightly equipped mortals attached to the two of you.
We can be in Ozmea in under two hours.
Please instruct the rest of the assembly and our mortal fellows and take the position,
while I convert the remainder of the steel rod from the entry site into steel cable.Having thrust the slab into Mari's hands, he quickly stomps off towards the glass house. Sounds of industry and metal working quickly commence.
